Inspiring

Stranger Gives Boots Right Off His Feet to Frostbitten Homeless Man With Blood Seeping Through Socks

A stranger on a Chicago train left passengers “floored” when he went above and beyond to help a man in need, NBC Chicago reports.

Jessica Bell was on the Red Line train Friday when she noticed Maurice Anderson taking off his shoes.

Anderson was returning to Chicago to be with his daughter after spending the week working in Kentucky as he routinely does.

Bell said on the other side of the door was an older man who looked “weathered” and wore gym shoes so tattered they looked like “slip-ons.”

“I don’t know how many pairs of socks he’s wearing in an attempt to keep his feet warm but there is blood seeping through,” Bell wrote on Facebook.

Anderson had new boots that Bell said were “built for a Chicago winter.”

“I just purchased those boots like two or three weeks ago,” Anderson told NBC 5. “But when I saw [the older man], it bothered me that he was out like that and no one had even lifted a finger to say, ‘Here man, go get yourself a pair of boots’ or whatever.”

“I wear a 12 and a half so I just took [the boots] off and said, ‘Here you go,’” he added.

“Quietly in a blink and you’ll miss it fashion, the younger man takes off the boots he’s wearing and passes them to the old man,” Bell wrote on Facebook. “He opens his suitcase and gives him a pair of socks as well. The young man puts on a spare pair of shoes from the suitcase. These shoes are nice too, but not as nice as the boots. They would have fit the old man just as well, but they were not what this old man needed.”

“The reason I posted about Maurice, is because we’ve all given or see people give food, or money to the homeless, but I have never seen someone give the clothes off their back so unselfishly and so humbly. I know Maurice didn’t do it for likes because he already had one shoe off before I even realized he was doing it,” Bell later told NBC 5.

She said that the older man was worried he had frostbite.

“He said he was going to wait until his feet thawed out to put the new shoes on, but he was sure they would fit,” she said.